What's up with Arrow?
By: Coaster Josh
In the recent months the talk about Arrow has been a mess. First Arrow is sued by Six Flags for the design flaws in X. Arrow goes bankrupt and then it's rumored that a possible sale will take place. Then nothing ever happened. Finally there's S&S makes an announcement that they are negotiating to purchase Arrow. Then to confuse everyone more, Arrow announces that it's in no hurry to sell out and would like to remain it's own company until it's forced to sell. What's going on?
This whole problem started when Arrow agreed to build X for SFMM. Now with the lawsuit from Six Flags going full swing, is it to late for Arrow. S&S hasn't made any announcements about not being interested, but with photos of new prototype rides from S&S popping up on Screamscape and the hiring of Denise Dinn from CCI to build woodies for them, would they really be in the mood to buy a bankrupt steel coaster company.
I don't want to blame this whole problem on Arrow, but they should have known better than to build a prototype coaster without having a working test model at their manufacturing plant. This is the very reason why they didn't go belly up when the introduced their Helix coaster. They built a prototype and tested it, finding out that it was very rough.
I have one more point to make before I end this weeks column about the Six Flags Lawsuit. It just seems like a waste of time to sue a bankrupt company for a coaster you wanted. Six Flags has had a few prototypes and they should know that problems occur. They wanted X they should face the problems, not sue the builder. Arrow working with the park's designers was also a bad idea. When a manufacturer works with a park's designers to find out where to build a coaster, that's a good thing, but when the park's designers get involved in the construction and the manufacturing of the coaster, the only thing that can occur is a problem. I have nothing against amusement park's designers, but a coaster is something that should be left to the coaster company. That's why they were formed and why they have the resources to build these thrill machines.
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